Angry J. Jonah Jameson Meme

Okay, so I saw this meme and guffawed like a fool. Basically, it's sorta similar to Ethan Kaye's SuperMeme that we did a while ago. You take a comic panel of Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson that has the word balloons and tv screen blanked out, and you add your own substitutions for memetastic fun.

I had to join in. You can check out my contributions in this Flickr set.

You can join in too! The original memer was kind enough to provide a blank. Now, if you have Photoshop, you can also try using my blank, where I've layered the images and masked out the word balloons and tv screen to make it easier and quicker to churn these out. In either case, it might help to know that the tv screen is rotated 4.2 degrees.

(Oh, and Kit, I know I don't have to challenge you on this one, but just in case: I challenge you!)

CageMatch Report

We CageMatched again last night. I was amused by my concept for this week's video. Go watch it first and then come back to discuss.

Did you watch it? Good.

The whole thing grew out of the name of the challengers, War On Hugs. That made me think of the classic Bugs Bunny line, "Of course you realize, this means war!" I decided to work up to that as a punchline. So I needed to have a reason for War On Hugs to declare war. I cogitated for a while, and somehow (?) decided it might be funny to have Flavor Shot supposedly planting fake news stories about the other team. That gave me the opportunity to mock up all those nutty headlines. In the final video, the timing is a bit off for comedic purposes. It was spot on when I read it, but I forgot to add in time for the establishing shot of the individual papers and the crossfades, so the final bits ended up a bit rushed.

Then I used some war footage from archive.org, a little simple animation, and came up with the War On Hugs identity sequence. That went over real well at performance time. It goes by too quick, but the background behind the pictures of Flavor Shot is made from a painstaking arrangement of bullets. (Zach thought it was butter.)

My Mom Is Creative

My mom is very creative. She made this sculpture for the Town of Chapel Hill's Community Art Project. She calls it "Waltzing On Top Of The World At 62" (it's a self-portrait). It's made mostly from stuff she found doing archaeological digs of the old trash pits in the old cotton mill village she lives in (Glencoe in Burlington, NC). My favourite bit is the hair, which is made of old Coca-Cola bottlecaps and bent brads.

Pictures are here, here, and here. And a long shot here.

Best Picture Ever Taken Of Me At DSI

This is me rocking out with Eitan Lees at the first night of the sheer awesometicity that was Troy Sterling's Air Guitar Madness.

Time For CageMatch Again

CageMatch returned to the DSI stage this past week. The video was basically two parts: since we were off for over a month, I went back to an idea I had used before, and had the champions be on tour for storyline purposes to explain the absence. The second half of the video was mostly a pretape of Bill Henderson as General Rod Skaggs. I had him make a speech about the USA, sing "America The Beautiful" in two tempos, and rail on his opponents. I filmed him in front of a bluescreen and dropped him in front of some stock footage of a waving flag. The music is from the Patton soundtrack and Bill's own "Ballad of Rod Skaggs".

The video is here.
Graphics are here.

The Real Basil Fawlty

Thought about posting this on the DSI forums, but I thought more of the folks here on The Transmutation Effect would enjoy it. If you're a fan of Fawlty Towers, you'll enjoy this video clip of John Cleese on Parkinson. Cleese tells some amusing stories about the hotelier that was the inspiration for Basil Fawlty.